Umineko Anime Episode 1- First Impressions

Nemuiwanko here! (Will be using this color to identify myself with) After a long hiatus from posting, I’m back to post about the newly released Umineko no Naku Koro Ni anime. I was pretty overjoyed to hear that it was getting its own anime adaptation but was pretty worried since a game of that caliber would not translate well into anime form. The game itself just has too much information, backgrounds, and even tea parties* (yes, tea parties) to consider and viewers would probably never fully understand the plot. The anime version of Ryukishi07’s (creator of Higurashi and Umineko) former work Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni managed to cover the major plot points but left out crucial details that would have explained and further contributed to the understanding of the story.

Opening Theme

The opening managed to capture the feel of the game opening and felt very similar.  But considering that both the game opening and anime opening were sung by Shikata Akiko it is no surprise that they retained the same feeling. However, I felt that the original game opening had more of a dramatic feel but the anime opening does stand on its own nicely.

Rest of Impression

Moving on, I find the animation to be pretty decent compared to the Higurashi series. However, anything has to be better than the game graphics!

versus

I’m sure glad we don’t have to see Tomitake George look like that.

But now focusing on how the story was executed in this episode, everything was rushed. Instead of starting out at the port after the scene with Kinzo, it skips right to the arrival at Rokkenjima. Introductions were made by Battler, but we don’t see the vital connections and backgrounds of the characters that were shown in the game. With how the games were, you never realize how much information you would miss if you didn’t hear everything from the narrator. Especially with the Natsuhi scene, viewers wouldn’t know that in terms of the hierarchial ladder in the family, she would rank below the children.

Referring to the hierachial ladder I mentioned earlier, notice the seating order for the family dinner. You have to wonder why some of the parents are separated from the rest. Especially the ones that don’t carry the blood of the family. Although the significance of this may not be too important in the grand scheme of the story, it does add a lot to the background and character of the Ushiromiya family.

Going back to the rushed pacing, I can understand that they want to get to the meat of the story. People would probably go bored out of their minds if they took the time to animate every single detail. I’m hoping that within the next episode that it’ll be presented in an acceptable way that can really cater to new viewers. Because from my viewpoint, the first episode doesn’t seem to be friendly to new viewers.

On another note, Horie Yui does a great job as Maria! The uuu~ sounds don’t sound as annoying coming from her ^_^ Although I saw a lot of Hanyuu in that. But I can never get used to see all that violence on Maria x_x;; It personally makes me really sad.

Since I’m no longer bombarded by homework and graduation, I’ll be getting back into the pace of posting and updating the page with wonderful news of figures and nendoroids. Thankfully Micchi-senpai has been covering that quite well. It makes me proud to see nendoroids pop up in the page with my long absence. And of course, I’m playing through episode 3 of the Umineko game at the moment, so I should be posting about that sometime soon.

Tabbing on to wanko’s post, I also felt that the first ep was quite rushed. I guess they didn’t want to bore people with all the intros for 18 people (Note: they forgot Nanjo). They sure got into the story right away. I felt the Rosa/Maria scene was done quite well and although some others thought that her ‘u- u-’ing was annoying, I thought it wasn’t that bad. Overall, I thought it was OK, but unspectacular. However, we all know watching the first episode is hardly a suitable gauge for a whole series, especially a Ryukishi07 work.

Things are going to get more interesting in the next ep…

‘Tomi’ George had his own charm. However, the kind onii-san feel from the anime is fine too.

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